Another day with wheels (and so on).
I took in a wheel from a customer (technically speaking) built with an Ursus TS58 carbon rim. This is the one I previously called "a waste of Chris King components," but I finally found time to rebuild it. It's got a Chris King red front hub with turquoise nipples and a turquoise rear hub with red nipples—that's the combination.
This wheel was built by some shop that deals in luxury components centered around American high-end brands and sells those fancy floor-display bikes. But I've never seen a wheel built by that place that was actually decent. I'm not against that business model, but maybe it's too soon for them to be building wheels. Beyond just the wheel quality, they're cutting corners in other ways too. I remember—that Reynolds bike was the same way (→here). In that linked post I said I didn't know who did it, but I had my suspicions. So when I handed over the wheel, I asked the customer, and yep, it was them.
Just like that Reynolds, this one is reverse half-comp. The freewheel side is CX-RAY and the non-freewheel side is comp in 4-cross lacing, but while trying out wheels like this for testing purposes is one thing, selling it to customers is questionable. Actually, once you build it, it's obvious that it's worse than a normal wheel. I'm pretty sure it would be obvious to a rider too. The reason is that this wheel barely shows any signs of use but already has changed owners multiple times. Since they botched this one after the Reynolds, I wonder if they're just illiterate when it comes to building knockoff "nomulabo" wheels—maybe they actually think reverse half-comp is just regular half-comp. There was a guy in the past who confused 4-cross with 6-spoke and did 6-4 instead of 4-6 lacing.
The non-freewheel side was all mushy. Meanwhile, the freewheel side had decent tension, so
while correcting the centering offset (which requires tightening on the freewheel side), even tensioning the freewheel side to the max, I couldn't dramatically tension the non-freewheel side.
So it needed rebuilding. The current owner has several wheels I've built, but just by squeezing the spokes of this rear wheel, they wanted a rebuild.
Freewheel side
Non-freewheel side
After carefully disassembling the wheel, these are the last nipples that hadn't been touched at all. The spoke length was slightly long, but within acceptable range. Since nothing was applied to the spoke threads, I could loosen them easily by hand.
I'm publishing the rim weight. This way, I can prevent the appearance of certain "inconvenient truth" comments.
Done building.
R45 hub, 24H, half-comp 4-cross with crossing, and
using red and turquoise nipples split evenly.
Next, the front wheel. Since the spokes are CX-RAY and all turquoise nipples, I could reuse the spokes if I just swapped the nipples half-and-half like the rear wheel, but
couldn't get a good shot.
The spoke length was too short, so I didn't reuse them. That shop should have a spoke cutter, so why are the spoke lengths all over the place? I cut them to nipple end-face or flush, but if they had a consistent standard and stuck with it, even split-slot to flush would be fine. But this is shorter than split-slot, so it's clearly too short.
If the spoke tension were abnormally loose and tightening would get it to split-slot, then reusing might be possible, but it was fairly well-tensioned, so that didn't work either.
Done building. R45 hub, 20H, CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing with red and turquoise nipples.
The current owner acquired this at auction, but the winning bid seemed fair for "just a good condition used Chris King hub alone."
About the Ursus brand—their selling point is that they manufacture their own original hubs (though there's nothing particularly superior about them in terms of dimensions or wheel construction), but the rims are just Chinese carbon rebranded. So if the hub is Chris King, there's actually zero original Ursus content. If I go into detail about this, the thought police will show up, so I can't write more.
Sorry for the wait! Please check out this image!
A fastforward 38mm high rim compared side-by-side with the F4R!
The specs are almost identical except for rim height!
↑Stop it already!
I took in a wheel from a customer (technically speaking) built with an Ursus TS58 carbon rim. This is the one I previously called "a waste of Chris King components," but I finally found time to rebuild it. It's got a Chris King red front hub with turquoise nipples and a turquoise rear hub with red nipples—that's the combination.
This wheel was built by some shop that deals in luxury components centered around American high-end brands and sells those fancy floor-display bikes. But I've never seen a wheel built by that place that was actually decent. I'm not against that business model, but maybe it's too soon for them to be building wheels. Beyond just the wheel quality, they're cutting corners in other ways too. I remember—that Reynolds bike was the same way (→here). In that linked post I said I didn't know who did it, but I had my suspicions. So when I handed over the wheel, I asked the customer, and yep, it was them.
Just like that Reynolds, this one is reverse half-comp. The freewheel side is CX-RAY and the non-freewheel side is comp in 4-cross lacing, but while trying out wheels like this for testing purposes is one thing, selling it to customers is questionable. Actually, once you build it, it's obvious that it's worse than a normal wheel. I'm pretty sure it would be obvious to a rider too. The reason is that this wheel barely shows any signs of use but already has changed owners multiple times. Since they botched this one after the Reynolds, I wonder if they're just illiterate when it comes to building knockoff "nomulabo" wheels—maybe they actually think reverse half-comp is just regular half-comp. There was a guy in the past who confused 4-cross with 6-spoke and did 6-4 instead of 4-6 lacing.
The non-freewheel side was all mushy. Meanwhile, the freewheel side had decent tension, so
while correcting the centering offset (which requires tightening on the freewheel side), even tensioning the freewheel side to the max, I couldn't dramatically tension the non-freewheel side.
So it needed rebuilding. The current owner has several wheels I've built, but just by squeezing the spokes of this rear wheel, they wanted a rebuild.
Freewheel side
Non-freewheel side
After carefully disassembling the wheel, these are the last nipples that hadn't been touched at all. The spoke length was slightly long, but within acceptable range. Since nothing was applied to the spoke threads, I could loosen them easily by hand.
I'm publishing the rim weight. This way, I can prevent the appearance of certain "inconvenient truth" comments.
Done building.
R45 hub, 24H, half-comp 4-cross with crossing, and
using red and turquoise nipples split evenly.
Next, the front wheel. Since the spokes are CX-RAY and all turquoise nipples, I could reuse the spokes if I just swapped the nipples half-and-half like the rear wheel, but
couldn't get a good shot.
The spoke length was too short, so I didn't reuse them. That shop should have a spoke cutter, so why are the spoke lengths all over the place? I cut them to nipple end-face or flush, but if they had a consistent standard and stuck with it, even split-slot to flush would be fine. But this is shorter than split-slot, so it's clearly too short.
If the spoke tension were abnormally loose and tightening would get it to split-slot, then reusing might be possible, but it was fairly well-tensioned, so that didn't work either.
Done building. R45 hub, 20H, CX-RAY outpoke radial lacing with red and turquoise nipples.
The current owner acquired this at auction, but the winning bid seemed fair for "just a good condition used Chris King hub alone."
About the Ursus brand—their selling point is that they manufacture their own original hubs (though there's nothing particularly superior about them in terms of dimensions or wheel construction), but the rims are just Chinese carbon rebranded. So if the hub is Chris King, there's actually zero original Ursus content. If I go into detail about this, the thought police will show up, so I can't write more.
Sorry for the wait! Please check out this image!
A fastforward 38mm high rim compared side-by-side with the F4R!
The specs are almost identical except for rim height!
↑Stop it already!